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Developers working on the WebKit engine, which is at the heart of Apple’s Safari Browser, are looking at ways to limit the amount of JavaScript that can be loaded by a website. It is a new and unique way to take on websites that load too many or too intrusive advertisements.

The code associated with ads, analytics and tracking scripts is one of the toughest JavaScript files on sites today. The idea of the developers is therefore to limit the load of sites on JavaScript resources. This way, web developers have to choose which JavaScripts they find more important. For example, developers may be tempted by site builders to show fewer advertisements, or to install fewer trackers on their pages.

Investing time

The sites that in turn choose to display ads and track users will in any case invest time in optimising their code. This should lead to faster loading and smoother operating websites. Last week they started working on this experiment.

This is not yet a feature that can be tested by Safari users, it will take several weeks or even months of work to do. However, the idea of limiting the amount of JavaScript scripts that can be loaded is interesting and has been welcomed by various web development experts.

New pop-up

The team behind Google Chrome is also working on a similar concept. Chrome intends to extend this script to more than just JavaScript code. The access that advertisements have to online fonts, images and CSS style sheets will also be reduced within Chrome.

However, the developers of Safari choose to restrict JavaScript only first. Somewhat less positively received is the idea of having a pop-up appear when a website reaches the limit. A user must then choose whether the site can load more content than initially allowed.

This news article was automatically translated from Dutch to give Techzine.eu a head start. All news articles after September 1, 2019 are written in native English and NOT translated. All our background stories are written in native English as well. For more information read our launch article.